


You Have Come to Journey's End

by unorigelnal (jayburding)



Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Child Death, Dark, Infanticide, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-12
Updated: 2012-05-12
Packaged: 2017-11-05 05:13:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/402802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayburding/pseuds/unorigelnal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to Safe in My Arms, for those who asked. What becomes of Loki, and how the Avengers try to understand what happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Have Come to Journey's End

They take Loki in because there is nothing else to be done. He is quiescent enough to be escorted away once his tiny pups are secured against his chest, away from prying hands. Bruce is the one to lead the broken god from his room, the only one trusted to be gentle when Thor dissolves into tears on Steve and cannot be consoled.  

Loki remains calm and entirely oblivious to them, singing under his breath for the whole journey.

It cannot stay that way once he is in the cell.

The... children have to be taken away. Loki fights like a wild thing to keep them, biting and clawing and throwing spells, incomplete and volatile, until they have to back off in fear of their lives.

In the end it is Thor who gets them away from Loki, with soft words that no one overhears and reverent hands to carry his tiny nephews away when Loki finally relinquishes them to him. The tears nearly shake them both apart.

Now, Loki sits in the glass cell built for him and sings to himself through his hitching breaths. The fractured lullabies seep through the seams of the door and filter through the whole facility, until everyone shivers with the cold of Niflheim that frosts every note.

“Why did he do it?” someone finally asks when they all sit miserable around the table and pretend they cannot hear death in the air.

Thor curls around Mjöllnir, held snug against his chest now that his hands are so, so empty. The metal is warmer than his nephews were. His grief weighs on them all in the red-eyed silence.

“He feared us,” Tony says. His fingers fidget, clacking against the dull light of the arc reactor. “He thought we would take them.”

“Well he was right there, wasn’t he,” Bruce says. He could no more have kept them alive than he’d been allowed to keep them when dead. The truth leaves a bitter aftertaste. 

“Mothers will do desperate things to protect their children,” Natasha murmurs, her chair tucked against Clint’s so they can share their strength, pressed together at the shoulder and hands clasped where no one can see.

“We’re the good guys though,” Steve says with wavering conviction. His hand lingers over the teeth marks on his arm. The dents are already scabbing over. “We don’t harm children.”

Bruce agrees, but there is a fear crawling green beneath his skin that says he can’t be sure S.H.I.E.L.D. would say the same. He sees that fear reflected in everyone at the table.

“We’re not good,” Clint replies, his grip on Natasha’s hand tightening. “Not to him.”

It’s all he will say, and it’s the closest he will ever come to defending Loki.

“Could we have made him so desperate he would resort to... that?” Steve asks, wearing his confusion like a shield.

“There’s no could about it,” Tony says. “We did.”

Thor strangles a sob. It’s violently loud in the silence that follows.

Complete silence. The singing has stopped.

They’re already bolting from the room when the perimeter alarm sounds.

Thor just leads the way as they burst into the holding cell, to find everything curiously intact. Loki is still in the same position they left him in, tucked up against the glass of the far wall.

He isn’t alone.

Mist unfurls around them as the stranger kneels beside Loki, reaching out to cradle his cheek. What she says to him is too soft to hear, but it makes him look at her, however briefly. Her next comment is louder, meant for eavesdroppers.

“Did you really think I would leave you to rot here? Time to come home, father.” 

Thor chokes, pressing his hands against the glass as the strange woman gathers Loki to her and rocks him like a child. The fall of dark hair hides her face, but the hand that rests against Loki’s cheek is withered, skin glinting like dull ebony in the fluorescent light. The blue spreads through his skin from each fingertip, as the glass frosts from the inside with every moment the woman remains within.

“Hel...”

She looks up at them then, gathered to watch the spectacle, and fixes Thor with the cataract of her cloudy eye, glowing like moonstone against the dark half of her piebald face.

“You can’t have him,” she whispers, soft as a last breath. “You’ve done enough. He’s mine now.”

Thor throws himself against the glass with a roar of denial, and the whole cell shakes. The glass doesn’t so much as chip. He tries again, and again, but the bones in his hands buckle before the glass does, skin splitting under the pressure and smearing red like hieroglyphs in the gathering frost.

Hel begins the lullaby again, never taking her eyes off Thor, and the ice closes over the glass until nothing can be seen within. It doesn’t take the breach alarm to tell them the cell is already empty. 

It takes all of them to drag Thor away. The lullaby hounds them as they retreat.


End file.
